An Elaboration.

I got married on Friday the thirteenth of May. I love my husband bunches and bunches. Hehehe. I have a husband. XD
Now. I have had dozens of people ask why we got married in a cemetery. Especially why we did this on Friday the 13th. Well. Part of it was because I wanted him to remember the date. Part of it was because he said he wanted to get married under an oak tree, and the cemetery has a bunch of gorgeous ones. Part of it was because I wanted to get married by water and the cemetery has gorgeous oak trees surrounding a little lake. And it so happened that when I was trying to think of a place with gorgeous oak trees not next to a street, that maybe just maybe happened to also be near water, my lovely mother suggested the cemetery where her parents are buried. She mainly meant it as a joke.
But it stuck.
I went to look at the area again. Just to make sure I thought it would really work. I took a couple pictures, sent them to my hubby-to-be, and he really liked it. I thought it would be awesome to get the two things we wanted, at a spot where my PawPaw and MawMaw would be there.
I was worried, however, that the cemetery owners would laugh at me outright when I asked if we could have it there. After much working myself up to it, I made the call. The woman I first talked to sounded surprised, but connected me to who I actually needed to talk to. He asked first, what time we were having it and how many people we expected. I answered all his questions and he said quite pleasantly that it would be fine. I was thrilled.
See, in the planning of our wedding, we hit a number of snags. I can't even begin to tell you. It was bad enough I had to wait around till my love could get enough leave to come home. Every time we came up with a date we liked we had to change it (a grand total of about 3 times. Finally we said to heck with it. I told him to let me know when he could get off and we would get ready on short notice.) So I waited over a year after our engagement for him to finally say "ok. I've got leave these dates." We whipped out calenders and decided Friday the 13th. Done. Finished. That's the date. It's official.

Well then more problems arose. We knew it was actually gonna happen and he was actually coming home for sure at the beginning of April. Which meant I had six weeks to plan a shindig. Ho boy.
Like I said, we had a slew of problems after that. In the months leading up to the us picking a date, I had gotten a lot of amazing people offering their services and help when it came. But because of the short notice, many of those people could no longer help. I lost a photographer, some family who offered to make the food, people who had offered to help decorate, a planner, and most upsetting of all, my brother-in-law, who we wanted to marry us, we found out couldn't in the state of Alabama. There were also some other things I have since forgotten in all the madness. But all the stuff that had previously fallen into place so randomly and wonderfully was quickly falling apart. And I was losing it. It was the end of the semester and my exams were literally the three days before the wedding. I was slowly getting stuff done, but I only had six weeks.
Then, two weeks and two days before we were supposed to get married, my Papaw who had agreed to make his gumbo for us called to say that because of the trouble he was having healing from his bypass surgery, he wasn't going to be able to make it. It sucked, but at the same time I was ok with it. I saw him the previous Sunday for Easter and he still had his leg wrapped up more than I expected. Then, that Friday, even though it was just a routine surgery to clean up the infection, he died.
My mom called me from school to meet her and she told me. Well I'm one of those people who handles stuff first and then panics/freaks out later. (I get that from my Mama. We're level headed while everyone else needs comforting so we can make sure everyone else is ok. Then once we know they are and all the important stuff has been handled, it is okay to let it sink in and start the motions of our own healing.) So I left Mama and went to get my sister from school. Took her to the orthodontist, then got my brother and got them food and then went home so mom could tell them. It was a pretty terrible weekend. Very nearly everyone on that side of the family sat at Granny's house for days. We cleaned, brought food, went through stuff, whatever. But we were basically always there.

Sunday was the wake. Monday was the funeral. The whole weekend my family went about trying to handle arrangements and stuff. Dad asked me if it would be okay if he tried to get Papaw's arrangements done with the cemetery we were getting married at. Then we found out there were two old family plots belonging to my great-grandparents that never got used somewhere in town. Turns out they were in fact at that very cemetery. I had debated about doing the wedding at all anymore. I didn't know how everyone else, let alone I would feel about being back there so soon. But I when the mysterious family plots appeared from nowhere and just happened to be in that very spot, it kinda seemed like this was how it was supposed to be. We asked Granny what she thought and she said Papaw had been looking forward to it and that was reason enough not to change anything. So we continued.

I didn't cry too much during those few days. Most of it hit the next weekend after I had had time to stop. Luckily I had my love there by then. It was a pretty dramatic breakdown at a pretty ridiculous time. I wish it hadn't been there... but oh well. It was bound to hit eventually.

Then Friday the 13th came. I did my own makeup, curled my own hair, which lost all sense of curl within a few minutes, sadly. And I drove our beautiful beast of a truck to the cemetery by myself. Family assembled, new photographer started snapping pictures, last minute, but very kind and thoughtful pastor showed up to do our traditional ceremony. I'll admit. It wasn't what I pictured. Quite frankly, with the exception of a select few small things, it wasn't what we wanted. But at the end of the day, it was a beautiful day full of beautiful people with me smiling and giggling like a little girl the whole time. It was a lovely morning. Then me and my new hubby went to lunch with my parents, two siblings, an aunt, and my sister's boyfriend at my favorite restaurant and the very one D asked my parents for permission to marry me in. Once we finished eating, we went, still in wedding garb, to see D's grandparents who couldn't come.

Like I said, unconventional, but great day. And I most definitely "remembered whose granddaughter I was." <3